“All I wanted to do was to get him out my car.”
This was the comment from the PH driver who drove Christopher “Monster” Selby from the Port-of-Spain General Hospital (PoSGH) to freedom on Friday afternoon, dropping the escapee off at Tamarind Square.
The driver, who did not want to be identified for fear of reprisal, spoke with the Sunday Guardian yesterday inside his car just outside the PoSGH where he picked up Selby. He said he did not see the man’s face, only a bullet that he was asked to throw away.
Selby, 30, along with Allan ‘Scanny’ Martin, 42, and Hassan Atwell, 41, shot their way to freedom from the Port-of-Spain prison around 12.30 pm on Friday. Martin was shot dead at the hospital’s guard booth while Atwell and Selby remained on the run last night. Police said the men were considered armed and dangerous. During the escape, PC Sherman Maynard, who was on sentry duty, was shot and killed.
The driver told the story of how Selby came into his car with little fanfare. The man sat relating what he said was a terrifying situation. The back seat passenger, he said, before entering his car, was telling someone on the phone that she was hearing gunshots. But before he could question the woman, who had now entered his car, Selby jumped in.
“As I pull up so driving slowly towards the car park’s entrance, as I do so the man was in the car and he say, ‘Drive I ain’t go hurt nobody’ and I say ‘ok sir’ and I pull out. I didn’t see any gun but if he had a bullet then he bound to have a gun, I wasn’t looking back for nothing,” the driver said, adding he did not try to alert two police vehicles that passed him along Nelson Street as he was fearful for his passengers’ lives.
He added, “All I tell him was boss man don’t hurt nobody. I tell him I was out there too and I turn my life to God and you can do the same thing my brother. You could do the same thing, if God is ready for you, you will not have jumped in my car, just so I tell him. I talking to him like that and all he saying is ‘Yes boss man’ like he was listening to me, yuh know. I just wanted him to get out my car.”
The driver said Selby wanted to go to Belmont but he told him no. He said after dropping off the two other passengers near South East Port-of-Spain Secondary, Selby got out at Tamarind Square afterwards, but he did not know where he went. Asked if he stopped working after that, the driver said no, adding that he has “God in him” and he could not “just stop my work.”
“I had to talk to him like the Father telling me what to say to him. I thank God he wasn’t yuh know...when them two girls get out I started to get more nervous, I had to talk to God first. He got off at Tamarind Square but I don’t know where he went, like he was talking to somebody on the phone. I didn’t see him meet up with nobody. He pay me a hundred dollars. I keep it anyway. He ain’t ask for change,” the driver said.